Garden Update Summer 2012

Other than our herbs, our garden edibles have done well in the extended wet and cool weather.

            Runner beans have climbed up and over a bamboo frame from plastic buckets of soil. They are flowering in readiness to produce one of our favourite vegetables, when harvested at about 6" in length.

            Three varieties of tomatoes, grown from seed on a shelf in our kitchen window, have romped away after being planted out in the only strip of soil in our otherwise paved garden.

Charlotte potatoes, planted with six tubers in each of four buckets of soil have produced lush and decorative foliage.

            One bucket was upended on our marble garden table after six weeks growth and produced enough small potatoes for a couple of dishes.

            Another bucket, upended after two months growth, gave us enough potatoes for four dishes.

            These culinary delights were first eaten boiled – with butter, chopped mint and sea salt. The rest became part of salads.

            The only other edible crop was asparagus. From its large flowerpot a mere eight spears grew. Six we ate raw as soon as they were large enough to share, and two were left to grow into our annual asparagus tree – tied to a bamboo. This tree is very decorative with its delicate fronds and red berries.

            Colour in the garden has been provided by the pastel shades of busy lizzies (impatiens), scarlet flowers from the stem of a Bolivian begonia, geraniums (pelargoniums) from the holes in the side of a strawberry pot, lavender and roses.

            We may have been fed up with the weather, but the garden plants seem to have loved it.